


The Bitter With the Sweet

by Spikedluv



Category: Primeval
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-01
Updated: 2011-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spikedluv/pseuds/Spikedluv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick stepped through the future anomaly, straight into the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bitter With the Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during season three, though I have not yet seen season three, just the BBCA previews for it. Written for the Small Fandoms Flashfic Challenge #27: Bitter.
> 
> Written: May 6, 2009

Nick stepped through the future anomaly, straight into the past. Five marines stood in a half circle guarding the anomaly and pointed automatic weapons at him, but they barely registered, because Nick only had eyes for one person.

“Stephen.” Nick stumbled forward, ignoring the guns and the order to halt. “Oh my god, Stephen.”

Nick didn’t miss the automatic step forward Stephen took, his body programmed to take care of Nick after nearly a decade of doing so. Nor did he miss the arm that shot out to stop Stephen.

“We don’t know anything about him, Stephen,” said Nick’s doppleganger. Although Nick supposed he was the doppleganger in this instance.

“You,” Nick said to other Nick, “you and I need to talk. And you,” he added, including Stephen.

Other Nick just raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Do we?”

“Yes, we do,” Nick said.

“I’ve called Lester,” Ryan said.

The sound of Ryan’s voice after nearly a year put Nick’s brain, stalled on the fact that Stephen was alive, into gear. The presence of Ryan and his men, of Nick’s team (well, other Nick’s team) at the anomaly, waiting for whatever was going to come through, could mean only one thing.

“You’ve already figured out how to detect the anomalies?”

No one spoke. Everyone, including Connor, looked to other Nick, and he refused to answer, so Nick continued, musing almost to himself.

“Well, it’s clear that you have.” Nick looked around the small clearing where the anomaly had appeared. “Since you were here, waiting for something to come through. Unless something’s already come through.” Nick’s blood froze. Or someone. “Tell me nothing else has come through.”

“Nothing else has come through,” Stephen answered him, apparently taking pity on him. Other Nick didn’t admonish him, nor had he, Nick noted, removed his hand from where Stephen had gripped it when he’d reached out to stop Stephen from approaching Nick.

“Thank god!”

“That we know of,” other Nick added.

“Oh, you’d know if one of these creatures came through,” Nick said.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He was in a hurry, so much to tell them, and so little time because there was no telling when the anomaly might close, but he knew from, well, from _being_ him, that other Nick wouldn’t appreciate being rushed.

“Please,” Nick said, forcing a patience into his voice that he didn’t feel, “I need to warn you.”

“About what?”

“About Helen,” Nick said, not for one moment worried about changing the future. Warning them about Helen, keeping Stephen alive, those things could only help keep the future Helen had shown them from happening.

No one else may have noticed the slight tightening at the corners of other Nick’s mouth, at the corners of his eyes, or the way Stephen squeezed his hand in support, but Nick did. It made him miss a time when he and Stephen had been close, though he wondered if perhaps this other Nick was a bit closer with his Stephen than Nick had ever allowed himself to be.

“What about her?” other Nick bit out.

“I’ll just presume at this point that you know Helen’s connected to the anomalies. You probably also know that you can’t trust her, but I’ll say it again because it deserves repeating, and we, you, whatever, have a habit of forgetting that the only thing Helen cares about is Helen. You cannot trust her,” Nick repeated, then looked right at Stephen and said again, “You cannot trust her. And you.”

He turned back to other Nick. “No matter what happens, no matter what she does, or says, don’t push Stephen away, don’t let Helen get her claws into him.”

The ‘again’ remained unspoken, but a glance at Stephen’s pale face told Nick that he’d heard it nonetheless, and that he knew that Nick knew something his Nick didn’t, not yet.

“The cost,” Nick continued, voice cracking as he imagined the other claws that had torn into his Stephen, “the cost of doing so is much too great.”

Nick knew exactly what other Nick saw when he looked at him; Nick saw it in the mirror every morning. He wore his grief and despair over Stephen’s death like a mantle. He hadn’t been prone to smiling much before (the only one who’d been able to stand being around him for long periods of time had been Stephen, and oddly enough, he’d also been one of the few people who could make Nick smile), he was even less so now.

Nike knew that other Nick could see his sorrow, maybe even thought he understood it. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, not until it happened to him, and Nick prayed that it never would.

“Professor!” Connor called out, and Nick turned at the strain in his voice, saw the anomaly start to flicker and shrink.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Wait, you can’t just leave!” Ryan said.

“Don’t forget what I said.”

Nick turned and dove back through the anomaly, the sound of other Nick telling Ryan to let him go ringing in his ears. He landed on hard packed dirt, surrounded once more by desolation.

“Cutter, are you all right?” Abby was right there, helping him to his feet.

“What did you find?” Helen asked.

“A world you haven’t managed to destroy yet,” Nick said, speaking angrily, the ache of Stephen’s death still fresh in his mind, “and hopefully never will.” He looked at the landscape surrounding them, then back at his team. “Let’s keep going. Connor, where’s the next one going to open?”

They walked on, following the information Connor’s anomaly detector spit out, but Nick couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that there was a world out there where Stephen was still alive, and would hopefully remain that way if they paid heed to his warning.

Still, while he may have been successful in saving this other Stephen, Nick knew that he’d failed his Stephen, failed himself, when he’d allowed the distance that had eventually led to Stephen’s death to grow between them. Nick reached up and rubbed his chest, trying to ease the tight band squeezing his heart; the loss of Stephen an open wound that had never quite healed, probably never would heal.

How bittersweet, Nick thought, the knowledge that Stephen lived, yet remained out of reach.

The End


End file.
